High Schools Connect With Suwanee Small Business Community

The age-old high school fundraiser is getting smarter in Suwanee. Booster club boards have found a way to encourage greater patronage with small business sponsors through a multi-use service card.

It’s a win-win-win situation. The high school team wins with funding. The local business wins with repeat customers. The purchaser wins with discounts in excess of what they paid for the card.

It wasn’t too many years ago that the high school students were asked to sell big coupon books. You remember those, right? Page-after-page of coupons to national merchants for $20. The trick was to find a participating location that would honor the coupon. Most purchasers found themselves just making a donation to the high school team and with a big book that they later threw out.

In more recent years, the fundraising efforts became more focused on the community. For the same $20 a contributor would receive a card with tear-off coupons to local merchants in their community. This worked much better for everyone because the purchaser knew where to redeem the coupon, the students found them easier to sell, and the community business benefited from the sale of the service.

In the past year, local high school boards have again modified the program to better reward all the participants. The students are now able to offer contributors a reusable card that offers the buyer a set discount at a participating business. The contributor keeps the card and shows the business on each visit to receive the agreed upon discount.  

Bob Peterson, from the Peachtree Ridge football booster club, says the Lions Dining Card was “an effort to reach out to our sponsors in our community and reward them.” The team recently used a coupon book. One challenge with the book was that it was administered by a fundraising company that kept 20-45 percent of the proceeds. Rather than helping the fundraising company boost their profits, Peterson says “we wanted to help local sponsors increase their business.”

So they created the Lions Dining Card. It’s a reusable card that the players sell for $20. The purchaser can preview a list of participating restaurants, all of which are in the Peachtree Ridge footprint. The restaurants do not pay any upfront money to participate. They provide a set discount when the card is displayed and promise to honor the discount for a calendar year. The collected funds are almost all profit for the booster club.

The Collins Hill basketball team uses a similar card called the Eagle Card. Susan Buck, basketball booster club board member,  says “we feel that businesses have given us a lot of support through the years, so we want to help them find repeat customers.”  

The Eagle Card costs $15 and provides supporters with discounts at sponsors in the Suwanee and Lawrenceville areas. It includes dining, services, and activities. Buck says “This is the only fundraiser we have in basketball, so we work hard to make it worthwhile. We try to get a good mix of services and dining so that it will appeal to more people.”

Peterson says, “What most people don't recognize is that we are responsible for raising all of our funds. Gwinnett County and the individual schools keep the gate fees and contribute very little to the programs. We depend on our parents, players, and most of all our community businesses.”

Both the Lions Dining Card and the Eagle Card list the participating community businesses on the back of the card. Some of the participating businesses also place signs in their front store windows to indicate that they accept the discount cards and support the local schools.

For more information on the cards or to order a card in support of the high school teams, visit these sites:

Collins Hill Basketball Eagle Card
Peachtree Ridge Football Lions Dining Card